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2 thoughts on “The Buzz”

I agree, ‘child welfare concerns’ (in the Irish context) are not a valid reason, they are a mere red herring – but I will come to that later.
Dr Brian Tobin, a lecturer at the School of Law in NUI Galway, writes that , “there is a growing body of evidence indicating that gay and lesbian parents are more than capable of fulfilling their parental duties and responsibilities towards their children.” But that is only partially true. One of the earliest same-sex divorces and battles over custody was in Australia (the country cited in the article).
He, and or the article, then go on to state that “an abundance of research since the 1970s has indicated that it is family processes rather than family structures that contribute to determining a child’s well-being and outcomes.” Again this is not quite true. There is some research – but not an abundance of same-sex research. The same-sex research may amount to, say, 20 original papers but is stacked up against in the region of 20,000 original papers for traditional families. So mole hill vs mountain ? Then again there is the question of child safety and risk factors. When heterosexual fathers want custody or greater custody time the conflict or violence card is played. Yet Dr Brian Tobin is silent on the many times greater IPV that occurs between same-sex couples, be they Lesbian or Gay.
To return to the red herring – Ireland unlike England actually has a Constitution and Articles 41 to 44 governs marriage and the state’s role in supporting it at all times. It is central to Irish life. Same-sex marriage measures in nothing short of debasing that Constitution for a small pressure group (in the UK it is 5% of the entire population) of which an even smaller fraction of that same 5% will want to marry and adopt children. Are we talking a dozen, a score or less than 100 here, or not ?